Tuesday, 14 February 2017

Further to my last post on why I wouldn't feel comfortable calling myself a philosopher, Isabelle Stengers' recent essay in Roland Faber and Andrew Goffey's The Allure of Things is very interesting. She writes:

"I learned that I would become a philosopher when reading Deleuze and I experienced that philosophy is worth existing only if it accepts the risk of existing in the teeth of other practices, producing its own demanding concerns without needing to weaken theirs." (p.195)

That is more or less exactly my frustration with so many excessively pious and all-encompassing readings of 'geophilosophy.' She adds:

"If I learned what it feels to become a philosopher with Deleuze, it is with Whitehead that I learned what it means to answer this challenge by practicing philosophy as an openly speculative adventure."(p.196)

I must admit that I continue to feel un-carried away by Deleuze. The aspects of his thought I find compelling are those I find in either Stengers or Latour after him or James or Whitehead before (and with less intellectual indigestion). It may well be my failing.